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News Releases

The Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest plan to create new off-road vehicle trails and allow vehicles in Inventoried Roadless Areas will destroy untold acres of public land, said conservation groups Thursday. The new plan, announced February 22, creates new off-road trails near wilderness areas, disturbs designated critical habitat for threatened and endangered species, and opens new areas to cross-country off-roading on sensitive lands.

With the 2008 presidential campaign heating up, national nonprofit Keep America Beautifulandreg; (KAB) is embarking on a campaign of its own as part of the national Great American CleanupTM, the nation's largest community improvement program which takes place annually from March 1 through May 31. Unlike the presidential candidates, the organization is making a rather unusual campaign promise – this year, it will "fight dirty" and focus on improving communities nationwide.

The Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota announces the Biomass '08: Power, Fuels, and Chemicals Workshop to be held July 15-16, 2008, at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Mass media efforts to raise American public concern about climate change -- such as Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and the "scientific consensus" media drumbeat ? ironically may be having just the opposite effect, according to a new study appearing in the scientific journal Risk Analysis.

Recognizing Honda's application of fuel efficient and alternative fuel technologies, four Honda vehicles earned recognition from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) as the "greenest vehicles of 2008" with the Civic GX natural gas car taking the title of the greenest vehicle for the fifth consecutive year, American Honda Motor Co., Inc., announced today. In the 11th annual ACEEE's "Green Book® Online" ranking of environmentally responsible vehicles (available at www.greenercars.org), the natural gas-powered Civic GX ranked first with the gasoline Civic, Fit and Civic Hybrid joining the list of the 12 most environmentally-conscious vehicles available to the public.

Center for Biological Diversity staffer Lydia Millet's new novel How the Dead Dream tells the story of an ambitious young California real estate developer who, in the wake of a personal crisis, becomes obsessed with rare and vanishing animals and starts breaking into zoos at night to be close to them.

The World Land Trust, which was one of the first UK charities to develop a carbon sequestration program, is strongly critical of the government's recently announced kite mark for carbon offset projects. Although the WLT would welcome a system which defines a code of best practise and helps the public identify credible offsetting organizations, they feel DEFRA has made a grave mistake refusing to acknowledge incredibly important voluntary schemes often located overseas in areas of high biodiversity and most likely to be affected by climate change.

SeaWeb, a global, non-profit organization, is offering travel scholarships for media to attend the world's preeminent summit on coral reef science and management. At this year's International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from July 7 to 11, the media will have access to leading ocean experts from around the world and to press briefings on the latest scientific findings, as well as a field trip to see firsthand the threats to coral reefs.